This invention relates to machines for packaging materials such as insulation, whether compressed or not, and particularly to a magazine for holding and feeding empty bags to the filler machinery.
Bag placers and magazines are important in the production line of a packaging operation in which material is inserted into bags. The two components of the finished product, the bag and the material filling the bag, are preferably provided without interruption. The bags may be paper or plastic or other suitable synthetic materials and the fill material may likewise be any fill material, although the machine disclosed and claimed in the present invention is intended for use in a fibrous insulation production machinery line. The production line normally includes conveyors of various types carrying the fill material from its production line, a bag provider machine of some type, a bag opener, a bag filler and finally, a filled bag remover. Some of these functions have heretofore been conducted by hand, such as by a person grabbing or unrolling a bag from a stack, opening it and placing it over a filler point. In this manual operation, the worker removes the bag, seals the end and places the bag on an exit conveyor for palettizing or loading on a truck. A goal of automation has been to reduce or eliminate as much labor as possible in the process and so machines have been devised to feed and position empty bags and open them so that they can be filled and thereafter remove the filled bags to storage or shipping facilities.
A persistent problem in the insulation production line industry has been the development of a bag magazine/handler/feeder which may continually be replenished with bag stock so that the production line is not halted or even slowed while stock is being replenished. This has been accomplished for roll stock plastic bags, but for bags which are provided in a flat pleated stack, there has heretofore been little machinery available in which the bag stack may be replenished without momentarily stopping the production line.
The objects of the present invention are:
a) to provide a bag placer magazine which effectively delivers bags to a filler station with high reliability;
b) to provide such a bag placer magazine in which the bags can be replenished during operation and without interruption of the process line;
c) to provide such a bag placer magazine which is safe and reliable in operation and is particularly suitable for the intended purpose.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description taken in connection with the drawings.
The present invention provides a bag placer magazine which accommodates flat pleated bags stacked horizontally on a moveable conveyor platform which circulates around the stacked bags and removes the bags one at a time from the bottom of the stack. Vacuum operated grippers are sequenced to extend upwardly through sequentially moved openings in the circulating conveyor, pull down an end of a bottom bag and then strip the bottom bag from the stack. The bag falls below the circulating conveyor to a deposit platform where the bag is indexed to a precise position and then routed to a bag filler station. The bag stack is replenished from the top while bags are being stripped from the bottom so that the flow of the production line is not interrupted.